Iwanowicz, who was named to the top spot Thursday after Gov. David Paterson fired Commissioner Pete Grannis Oct. 21 over a leaked DEC memo on the dire impact of planned layoffs, also faced another major environmental downsizing during his first day on the job.

He offered few details on Paterson's decision last week to eliminate the state's 30-year involvement with the federal Superfund pollution cleanup program.

New York state is home to the nation's largest Superfund project, the dredging of toxic PCBs from a 40-mile stretch of the Hudson River that started in 2009 and is expected to run for years to come.

"No final decision has been made on this. It is not a fait accompli. We will be looking at areas where the federal government can take more on and we can pull back," said Iwanowicz, who had been Paterson's deputy secretary for the environment since late 2009.

He could not say how much money Paterson hopes to save by pulling the state from Superfund, which is run by the Environmental Protection Agency. There are currently 114 federal Superfund cleanup sites in the state.

General Electric Co., which discharged PCBs into the Hudson from its plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, is paying for the Hudson cleanup, which is overseen by EPA and DEC.

Dave King, EPA project administrator for the Hudson River cleanup, said no one from DEC talked with him about Superfund. "We hope to have some kind of working relationship with DEC on this project," he said.

Superfund owes its existence to the 1970s toxic waste dump at Love Canal near Buffalo. Congress created Superfund in 1980 in response to Love Canal and several other high-profile toxic dumps elsewhere in the U.S. EPA is preparing to add the Dewey Loeffel PCB landfill in Nassau, Rensselaer County, to the program.

After initially demanding that Grannis lay off 209 workers at DEC, the governor last week set the number at 150. Asked about the change, Iwanowicz said the smaller figure was "more reality based," reflecting staff reductions already obtained in September from an early retirement program that saw 260 DEC staffers leave.

Asked if he had any message to the staff at DEC, where morale has been low from earlier rounds of staff cuts and the Grannis firing, Iwanowicz said "If we had millions of extra dollars, my preference would be to plow that back into the environmental agencies. But the fact is, we don't. We have to figure out what is essential and what is not."

There are no examples of other states withdrawing from Superfund before.

"We have not heard officially from the state, and without details, this is difficult for us to answer," said Bonnie Bellow, a regional EPA spokeswoman, when asked about New York's plan to withdraw from Superfund.

"We certainly know we are concerned about the potential impacts on New York environmental programs. DEC is already stretched very thin, and further cuts will make that worse."

Federal law requires that states pay for 10 percent of Superfund cleanup costs when the polluter cannot be found. "We fully expect the state to meet those obligations," Bellow said.